When he was sixteen years old, Jiang Yu saw Xu Yanlang for the first time in the dormitory - he had dark skin, showed white teeth when he smiled, and there was chalk dust on the tip of his nose, as if he had just run back from the playground.
They slept in the lower bunk all winter, and drew chalk drawings on the blackboard together. In the winter solstice cafeteria, Jiang Yu silently ate all the broken dumplings made by Xu Yanlang, including those with thick skins, those with loose fillings, and those boiled into noodle soup.
Late at night during his sophomore year of high school, Jiang Yu sent three text messages.
No reply. He took silence as rejection and pressed his feelings into the last page of his sketchbook, which was blackened by pencil dust. After the college entrance examination, the two went their separate ways, eight hundred kilometers apart, as if the distance between them had never really narrowed.
Twelve years later, at Xu Yanlang's wedding, his twin brother Xu Yanche drove Jiang Yu home. The car stopped in front of a red light, and Xu Yanche suddenly spoke——
\"He didn't see any of the text messages you sent to Alang that year.\"
\"I deleted it.\"
Three text messages. Twelve years. A stolen answer.
It's not that Xu Yanlang didn't respond. It was something Xu Yanlang never had the chance to see.
Purpose: pure love among brothers on campus